What the Center for Healthy Sex says about “Helping You Heal”: Part II

The Center for Healthy Sex has a presentation (a booklet, it says) for partners called Helping You Heal. Of course I can’t post the whole thing, so here’s a link that opens it in a new window, where you can read it yourself. The piece opens with a bang–its intro paragraph, which ends:

…this booklet may answer some of the many questions that you have about what sex addiction is, how you and your partner can get help, and what traumas and experiences might have gotten you here in the first place.

(No, I’m pretty sure it was the fact that he was hiring hookers and meeting strangers from Craigslist for NSA sex.) First comes the acknowledgement that the partner is in pain, confused, hurt, and angry. She is in a vulnerable state, seeking help. What better time to plant the idea that her own past traumas and experiences landed her in this wasteland? It shifts the focus off his abuse and onto her history. She is somehow complicit already. This idea is reiterated later on, where it is asked, How Does My Addicted Partner’s Problem Relate to Me? The answer:

Partners are not responsible or to blame in any way for the addict’s behavior. However, unresolved issues and trauma can unwittingly contribute to the dysfunctional dynamics of the relationship.

We are then told that the partner often ‘lives in denial,’ because the addict’s behavior is ‘too painful to acknowledge.’ (OR the partner had no clue, never suspected her husband was capable of anything close to this treachery.) Further down, we get:

…all pieces of a system contribute to the operation of that system. This means that both partners have participated in the coupleship dynamic. This in no way excuses the hurtful choices addicts have made in service of their addiction. Rather, this points the way towards engaging in your own journey of personal recovery.

Would anyone dare to suggest that the wife who has been beaten by her husband participated in the coupleship dynamic? Would they say he “made hurtful choices” in service to his rage? Would anyone advise her to stay with him as she engages in her personal journey?

And part of that journey includes couple’s therapy as an “important intervention to work through the crisis and towards a plan for the future.”

Now, I’ll move down to the section where we find “Should I Separate from my Partner?” It begins, “As a general guideline, any major decision like divorce is best postponed until the feelings have been processed and the addict has some sober time.”Here it is, the usual suggestion to stay put, paired with the magical assumption that the SA will accrue some “sober time.” It goes on to say that a short-term “therapeutic separation” can be useful, and that the couple should talk about it and agree on a time frame. But even this should not happen until after the formal disclosure session.

In the section that asks the question, Why do I feel physical pain, the partner is warned:

Be careful about further traumatizing yourself when you start to go through email accounts, cell phone records, or consider calling his/her affair partner. It’s unlikely that these behaviors will give you the relief, peace, or explanations you’re seeking.

Yes, it’s doubtful that the information a partner might find while checking out his profile on Adult Friend Finder or the credit card charges for “escorts” will bring peace or relief, but it can certainly come in handy during a divorce. (I think this is the part where they should be advising her to make copies and document everything.)

I’ll skip over all the stuff about attending 12-step groups and about having sex again with the SA and go right to Rebuilding Trust. There’s a lot about how the SA lies and tells half truths, because “if he’s not in recovery, his thinking is most likely informed by the addiction.” I’ll venture that his thinking is informed thus regardless. How, then, can the partner possibly hope to trust him again? The answer: “…trust can gradually be rebuilt through a process of healing, which can include a formal disclosure.” There’s a protocol, you know, and “you will be asked to attend several individual ‘prep’ sessions both before and after the disclosure” (Cha-ching). It seems like an awful lot of trouble, not to mention a drain on the family’s resources, to get a grown man to fess up.

After doing the recommended formal disclosure and 12-step meetings and individual counseling and couple’s counseling–this grueling process of rebuilding trust, you’d think you could count on good results. Alas, “Slips are a part of recovery and generally considered a ‘stumble’… There is no such thing as a perfect sobriety or recovery.” Relapses are more severe and “require that the addict put more effort into their recovery.” Partners just need to make sure they have good boundaries (the therapist can help with this too!). Note also, “Like a slip, it is important that you and your partner communicate and are clear about what the action plan is for addressing the relapse.”

By the time the man has put his partner through this much hell, then has slipped and relapsed, do they truly believe that any type of communication with him is going to make a difference?

Like this:

2 Responses

So, according to Doc K, my FOO issues contributed to 20 years of my husband screwing hookers? That’s interesting. Especially since he admitted to doing this BEFORE he ever met me. By the time I came along he was well practiced in lying, deceiving and manipulating.

These folks would rather blame the partner than to admit that sex addicts emotionally abuse their partners. Change the scenario to domestic violence, and you can clearly see how absurd it is in relation to abuse. Of course, every partner has issues- every person does, for that matter. But those quotes from Katehakis are all just psychobabble designed to gaslight the partner and muddy the waters so that the real truth- that sex addicts emotionally abuse their partners- is obscured.